Page 84 of Exile and Embrace

I close the door and round the front of the car, sliding into the driver’s seat beside her.

Ava squeezes her eyes shut, rubbing them with the heel of her hands.

“Finn, I don’t know what to do about any of this. I know that I said I wanted to find out what my father was hiding, but I didn’t think it would be this. I didn’t think that there was going to be an entire person that I should have known about. Or that I was going to have an aunt that I never got to know growing up.”

I turn on the car and back out of the driveway. “You’re doing the best you can with everything that’s happened. It’s okay to take a break and step away from it all for a couple days.”

She sighs. “I know. Logically, I know that, but my head keeps telling me that there has to be more I don’t know. I want there to be a good reason for why he kept my family from me.”

“You may never get a good reason for that.”

I glance at her from the corner of my eyes, watching the tears slip down her cheeks. Each one ripping my chest in half.

She wipes them away and glares at the road in front of us.

Ava sniffles and tosses her head back. “If this damn crying would stop, that’d be even better. Distract me with something, please. What are we doing tonight?”

Drumming my fingers on the wheel, I look for the right words to tell her that I have to kill someone. “You know what I used to do for my father?”

She swallows, her throat bobbing. “Yeah.”

“Well, I do the same thing for Cillian on occasion.”

Ava looks out the window, her hair falling like a curtain between the two of us. She’s silent for a moment before her laughter fills the car. “That’s what you thought would get my mind off everything going wrong in my life?”

I shrug and turn onto the highway, heading for the warehouse where my target should be tonight. “You’d at least know that there’s somebody out there having a worse day than you.”

She scoffs, but she can’t hide the slow smile creeping across her face. “That’s horrible.”

I put my hand on her thigh, squeezing it gently. “You’re the one who smiled. So, who really is the horrible one here? Not me.”

Ava traces a pattern on the back of my hand with the tip of her finger as I get off the highway and drive down a dark back road.

I follow the road until it opens up to the rear entrance of the warehouse district.

As I turn down another street, I cut the headlights.

Ava squeezes my hand before sitting back and watching the buildings pass us by.

I stop a few buildings away from the one I need to be in.

I turn to face Ava, reaching into the glovebox and pulling out a gun and silencer. “You’re going to stay here. I’m going to go get the job done. You’ll see a white truck coming back around that corner. If it’s not me driving, you get in the driver’s seat, and you speed out of here like a bat out of hell.”

Ava shakes her head. “I’m not going to leave you here if things start going sideways.”

“Yes, you are. If I’m not coming around the corner in a white truck in ten minutes, get out of here and don’t look back. Call Cillian. Tell him that the job went wrong, and he’ll handle the rest.”

I pull out another gun and hand it to her.

Ava sighs and checks the chamber and the magazine. She keeps the gun on her lap as she glances at the warehouse.

As I get out of the car, she shifts into the driver’s seat.

I lean down in the doorframe, giving her a quick kiss. “I mean it, Ava. Ten minutes, then you get the hell out of here.”

I kiss her again, deeper, before shutting the door. When I point down at the button, she locks the doors.

Once I’m sure she’s safe, I creep through the shadows toward the warehouse.

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